HUMPERDINCK: Shakespeare Suite, Heirat Overture, OOP

Orchestral music of German composers Engelbert Humperdinck (1854 - 1921), a composer with a much larger output than the few works for which he's known. Karl Anton Rickenbacher leads the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in his dramatic, Wagnerian Overture #2 from "Die Heirat wider Willen", the two lightweight Shakespeare Suites taken from incidental music, and the Humoreske in E. Out of print 1994 disc on the Koch label. You can listen to excerpts from this disc here .

From the Gramophone review:

Rickenbacher and the Bamberg orchestra were responsible on an earlier Virgin Classics disc for unearthing some of Humperdinck's long-neglected orchestral works (11/94). Here again, on this Koch Schwann disc in another group of his shorter works, the composer's open charm comes over winningly in excellent performances, beautifully recorded. The Shakespeare Suites, often drawing on a vein of sensuousness beyond that of Hansel und Gretel, are taken from the incidental music Humperdinck wrote between 1905 and 1907 for four Shakespeare productions, three by Max Reinhardt. Pieces for different plays are freely mixed, so that movements for The Winter's Tale and The Tempest appear in both suites. Even so, the resulting sequences are remarkably consistent and satisfyingly balanced. The first suite starts with a substantial introduction or overture for The Tempest, with a slow opening section leading to a powerful storm sequence. Two shorter movements for The Tempest lead to the one movement here--but that substantial--inspired by The Merchant of Venice. It is a love-scene subtitled On such a night, evoking the Jessica/Lorenzo passage used by Vaughan Williams in the Serenade to Music. Humperdinck's orchestration is even more ravishing there than in the rest, with sumptuous melodies for horn and for clarinet over harp. The second suite is shorter, with no extended movements, but again the lyrical invention is a delight, with one charming idea after another, ending with the most colourful one of all, the Procession of the Shepherds from The Winter's Tale. In slow crescendo it builds up a tingly march tune in ostinato with a brief contrasting section in the middle. The other two works both date from earlier in Humperdinck's career. The Humoresque was one of the works which in his final year as a student in Munich won him the Mendelssohn prize to go to Italy. Though the idea came to him in a fairy-tale dream, it is an unpretentious, extrovert piece with a jaunty main theme, very well orchestrated. The comic opera, Die Heirat wider Willen (Marriage against their Will), written just before the Shakespeare music, was based on a play by Dumas pere and was given its first performance in Berlin in 1905 under no less a figure than Richard Strauss. The following year Humperdinck had second thoughts about the overture, and wrote the one heard here, another attractive piece, the most extended on the disc, with a long lyrical introduction leading to an effervescent Allegro, rounded off by a jaunty coda. The consistent beauty and finesse of the orchestration are superbly caught in these fine performances, both polished and purposeful. An unusual disc well worth investigating.

Disc, booklet, and case are in mint condition. Winner pays First Class shipping cost of $3.00 to US addresses, $3.75 to Canada/Mexico, $6.25 to any other country. Yes, I do accept payment by Paypal, including credit/debit card payments! If you have not yet read eBay's payments policy, here it is .

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About Jimmosk's CDs
I sell high-quality, little-known works, mostly 19th- and 20th-century. Many of the CDs are used, some are still-sealed, and most are the only one of that disc I have ...... read more